over_europe

"Keep moving, keep moving!"

It's pretty easy to find Dick Winters. Nix just has to follow the sound of the shouting. Nix remains bent under cover of the nearest Sherman as he approaches where Dick is standing in the road, anxiously watching the retreat from Neunen. Soldiers run past Captain Winters, headed for the relative safety of the nearest truck, some men limping, some carried, and all hurrying like hell. These are not the conquering heroes who strode and strutted through Eindhoven.

"Move 'em out, let's go!" Dick yells again.

An explosion, in the town; a big old three-story stone building erupts in a roar. Nix winces.

Standing behind the comforting bulk of the tank tread, Captain Nixon squints at the scene in front of him, then at Dick, who's leaning against a truck, rifle clenched in his hands. Men bolt past, some running through the field alongside the road and others hauling each other into truck beds behind him.

Behind them, Neunen is crawling with Germans.

Frowning, Nix leans up. "How bad?"

Lewis Nixon had never known that the Dutch were such a rowdy bunch. Must be something the Germans put in the water, he muses acerbically to himself, making his way through the dancing, shouting, singing, cheering, waving crowds that have been pouring out of every house in Eindhoven. There's been no resistance since the paratroopers landed in the Dutch fields of tall grass and grains. Nix can't decide whether that makes him more or less nervous about what lies ahead.

The crowds push closer and closer as Dick Winters stands on a street corner, peering through his field glasses. He’s scanning the windows and rooftops of surrounding buildings but is finding it difficult to distinguish anything out of the ordinary. He feels someone jostle him from behind, but doesn’t pay attention to the movement until he hears a familiar voice.

"Dick, clock's tickin'," says Nixon, pushing his way through the nearest part of the madness.

The fact that a number of paratroopers are joining the celebration, despite the shouting of the officers for them to continue, isn't helping matters. "Keep your squad moving!" is a constant cry in the background.

Nix watches it all uneasily, glancing at Dick.

"Yeah." Winters tucks his binoculars into his field jacket after one last, long look at the area. Pulling on the collar of his uniform, he attempts to downplay the fact he's an officer, trying instead to look like any one of the dozens of paratroopers strung out through the crowd. He's not paying attention when a young woman with a laughing smile grabs his shoulders and presses a kiss to his lips.

"Thank you," is all Winters can think to mutter as he pulls away, the woman turning and continuing on her way.

Beside him, Nix is dealing with his own overzealous thankful citizen. "Thank you, thank you . . ." The young lady is not to be dissuaded, despite the paratrooper not-so-subtly trying to pull away from her and her hands, and Nixon nearly pulls a face as she kisses him. "Very kind." As the laughing girl and her friend move on, Nix spots Harry Welsh approaching with a sour expression.

Moving through the crowded streets, big blond Lieutenant Buck Compton spots Winters, Nixon and Welsh grouped by the street corner. "What's up, Welshie?" he asks the shorter man as he comes upon the tense-looking trio. He scans the sea of people, waiting to hear what's happening.

Harry turns his head slightly as he proceeds to pop his jacket collar up, covering up the brass he wears. Or trying to. The damned map case strap just doesn't seem to want to play nice. "Snipers. We gotta get to those bridges." Finally giving up, he slings the case forward, hugging it close and generally looking slightly annoyed.

Screams are a thing that tend to catch a man's attention. The four soldiers begin to notice the women being dragged through the crowd, and the American officers push their way through to the edge. Inside the loose circle, a half dozen women are being stripped down to their undergarments in the dust, screaming and crying, other women mercilessly ripping their clothes off.

One woman wails as one man holds her down, and another Dutch woman cuts off her hair in giant chunks with a big pair of scissors. Her scalp is bleeding. The crowd chants in vicious-sounding Dutch, still waving their orange flags.

Nix doesn't know what they're saying, and he’s got even less of an idea as to what's going on. Mouth dry, he says, "What'd they do?"

Someone had been listening. "Zey slept with zee Germans," a man about the same age as the officers says in a rather cocky form. He wears an orange brassard on his left arm, proudly displaying it, along with the openly wide smile he shares with the Americans. "Zey are lucky. Ze men who collaborated are being shot."

Nix looks over his shoulder at the accented voice. He recognizes the other man and he turns the rest of the way around, and glances at Dick and Harry. "Mr. van Kooijk here is with the Dutch resistance."

van Kooijk offers his hand to each man, clasping the American’s with his right and covering with his left. His handshake is firm and very respectful. "We've been vaiting and hoping for this day . . . for almost five years."

The throngs of Dutch continue to sing and dance around them, waving American and Dutch flags as well as orange banners, pleased with their newfound freedom. However, still, in the distance, the cries of anger of those watching the punished women add a tense hint to the air.

Ignoring the cheering crowds, the paratroopers getting dragged through—and away from Dutch women—by their commanding officers, and the general clamor, Nixon says, "Says he can help us secure the bridges here."

The member of the Dutch resistance gives a firm nod. "Yes. Together ve can push zee remaining Germans out of Eindhoven." Pausing, van Kooijk raises his hands palms up, still smiling from ear to ear. "And that's just zee beginning."

Tilting his head to the side a bit, Winters thinks for a moment. "Any idea where they might be?" he asks over the din of the crowd pressing in on them.

The smile wavers just slightly. "Ah, vell," the Dutch man starts, almost looking embarrassed, "vee're still working on that right now." van Kooijk turns to his right, motioning with his hand for a young boy—also wearing an orange armband—to approach. "Peers and his friends here are gathering information as ve speak. His contacts, a couple of towns down, said they saw the British 2nd and guards armored move through, half an hour ago."

"They're just kids," is all Winters can think of to say as this latest bit of intelligence is passed on to him. He glances at Nix off to his side, trying to gauge his reaction without being obvious about it.

Nixon's expression, as he glances back at Dick, says '. . . Well' eloquently, without a word passing between them.

van Kooijk is quick to reassure the officers. "These are reliable reports. Anything ve can do to help you, ve vill do." The boy, Peers, looks up from Winters to Nixon then back again, giving a firm nod. He is much like the adults in this situation—calm and matter-of-fact. Anything to chase the Germans from their lands. "Anything."

With a pat on the shoulder, van Kooijk directs Peers back towards his friends. Just then, something large, olive drab, and covered in people starts down the street.

The British armored have finally arrived.

"Right on time," somebody mutters, as they all turn to watch the jeeps and tanks—covered in pretty girls waving flags and young soldiers puffing out their chests—crawl down the street. Their progress is agonizingly slow.

Turning his head away from the slowly-moving tanks and the waving Brits, van Kooijk looks back to the American officers. "Captain. I'll be happy to show you the quickest route to the bridges"

Winters sighs as he watches the 2nd Armored tanks clank and begin their move into town. Turning back to van Kooijk, he fixes a steady gaze on the man. "I'd be happy to have your help." To the American officers standing with him, he says, "Get scouts to the edge of town in case we're here for the night."

van Kooijk nods at his words and glances down the street once more. The vehicles continue to crawl down the street, and the Allied military personnel keep right on celebrating as though they've already won the war.

Nixon isn't the only one who has a bad feeling about this.

D-Day + 7, 1944: Outskirts of Carentan

The morning sky hanged gray over the French countryside after the night's torrential rain and thunder. Captain Nixon lifted his binoculars to his eyes again, taking in the scene below. The battalion was laid out in the same defensive position they'd been in since the night before, dug in, spread in a line along the edge of the thin wooded area. The Germans were dug in across the field. Lethal machine gun and rifle fire tore into both forces, flying across the insignificant distance separating the ranks. Smoke already rose, mixing with the sky. Nix could hear the distant shouts and screams for a medic even from atop the hill.

His eyes trained on the northern end of the battle, Nix saw the PzKpfw first. “Sir,” he said urgently, looking to Major Strayer.

Strayer turned away from his conversation with a junior officer and swore, taking several steps forward. “Panzers.” He looked at Nix. “How many?”

Nix watched the tanks rise over the hill, beetles motoring through the ants of the German lines. “Five and counting.”

“God help 'em,” Strayer muttered, and then he turned away to bark orders to the radioman, telling him to transmit the order to hold, shouting to get somebody from the 2d Armored on the line.

Barrels lowered as the tanks crawled forward, and two halted and opened fire with tremendous booms. Trees snapped like kindling; dirt from the Americans' embankment erupted high into the air and Nix saw at least one man flying with it. More tanks trained their big guns on D, E, and F Companies, and rounds crashed through the ranks. Smoke shrouded the battlefield and it was easy to see, to understand, the desperation even from on high. Men were dying. The explosions and enemy fire didn't end.

And the men of D and F began emerging from the other side of the woods, running for everything they were worth. Even as they bolted, some were cut down, catapulting and wheeling to stops.



Nix tore the binoculars from his face. “Sir, Dog and Fox are pulling back.”

“What?” Strayer demanded, and he wheeled to train his binoculars on the rapidly collapsing left flank.

D and F continued to flee, but E held fast, battling with rifle fire, bazookas, mortars. They took down two tanks. Nix couldn't say that he was surprised, knowing the company and its commander as he did. What he was, however, was worried. The Germans simply had to swing around the line to be in prime position to take back Carentan. But Easy Company would not yield.

The boom resonated first, of a different timbre than the rounds fired by the Tigers, and then the first Sherman tank motored into view. It stopped in its tracks and fired, and a Tiger rocked back on its treads and burst into flames.

Nix let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. “Well, hello, Second Armored.”

By the time that the last Tiger had been turned to a smoking husk and the men were climbing out of the trenches, blackened and bloody and grinning, Captain Nixon was writing his report.

(Some dialogue from Band of Brothers.)

D-Day+6 and it had finally stopped raining in Normandy. Granted, it was 0130 and regimental headquarters had kept 2d Battalion moving and re-moving all night long after the march through the swamps and the hedgerows had finally ended; they kept changing the god damned boundaries between the 1st and 2d battalions. It became even more difficult when the two battalions kept losing contact in the darkness and the inhospitable tertain. First, regimental HQ said to set up here, then there, and Nix was a little apologetic by the fourth time he brought the order to stop, dig in, and set up machine guns and bazookas. Dick Winters didn't complain. Every other man in the 506th did.

But at least it wasn't raining.

Maybe, Nix thought, shoving his way through the brush in the dark, this would be the last time. He knew better than to hope for it. They still had to cross the Douve River before they would be in place around the town of Carentan for the morning's assault.

Before he could worry about that, though, he had to find his way to Easy Company's position. Pushing through the hedgerows as quietly as possible, which wasn't very quiet, he muttered-sang low as he went.

"We fall upon the risers, we fall upon the grass. We never land upon our feet, we always hit our ass..."

The men of Easy Company had been through so damn much together.

They’d survived Toccoa, the march to Fort Benning, the incompetent leadership of Herbert Sobel; the training, the hardships, the wash outs; the steamer voyage to England, the mock jump, the days of agony and the three dreaded words: “No jump tonight.”

And still, there was no preparing for June 6, 1944.

They sat in the aircraft, seventeen men pressed shoulder-to-shoulder on the two long benches, and some of the paratroopers would tell you that that moment was the worst. Sitting on the runway in Upottery, listening to the propellers kick to life and knowing that outside, the camp had come to a standstill as all personnel, American and British alike, stood and solemnly, silently watched as the convoy left for France. The bottom dropped out of the men’s stomachs as the wheels left the ground and – that was it. They were finally going to see some action, boys, Hanley whooped above the roar of the propellers, but most soldiers sat silently.

As day turned to night, most of the planes opted to open their door. Given the choice between the ability to talk in normal tones in stifled air, or to breathe freely and smoke, most sticks chose the smoking. Hearing each other wasn't important. There wasn’t much to say that hadn’t already been said on the airstrip at Upottery.

A certain Lieutenant Nixon had already said his piece — “Look, Dick, if I go down — you can have my whiskey. No, yeah, yeah, really. I know. The generosity of a Nixon knows no bounds.” — and he’d made his peace, too, of a sort. He'd signed his GI insurance bill, sent a stilted, awkward letter (what do you say to your estranged wife when you're about to jump out of a plane and into the war in Europe? Nix wrote the letter and he still didn't know) to Cathy. He was ready to go.

He sat on a bench in plane #66, the line of men swaying with each bump, and he watched the others. He wondered idly if his face was as pale under the streaked black pitch as theirs were. The medic prayed with a set of rosary beads. A mortarman smoked and clicked the standard issue cricket. Several compulsively checked their equipment, the shoulder straps of their parachutes, and Nixon sat with his forearms on his knees and he let them do it. All the rest sat silently, hands fidgeting or tapping cigarettes or clenched into fists. They waited.

Nix didn’t watch the view nearly as much as he watched the men over the course of that plane ride, but he became inured to the sight that greeted him outside the open door, after a while. The combined might of the Allied Expeditionary Force steamed along in the steel gray ocean blow, troop ships and battleships and every damn kind of ship you could think of. Planes stretched as far as the eye could see in the air, formation V’s disappearing into the dark gray-blue clouds in the distance.

And when the clouds began to light up in the distance, he couldn’t hear the bangs yet, but he knew they were coming. He doublechecked that his helmet was on tight, and he sat upright.

* * *

The sight was incredible; searing white-hot tracers flashing up from what seemed to be every square inch of farmland, fields spread out like a crooked patchwork quilt; planes flying every which way and open parachutes and red-orange-yellow explosions already beginning to blot out the sky. Nixon didn’t, couldn’t pay it too much attention; he kept his eyes on the light and the jump master. The jump master got them up, hooked up, checked out, sounded off, all under the harsh lines created by the red light, all under the plane rattling and jerking and roaring. This was it. This finally was it, and Lewis Nixon still wasn't sure what the hell he was doing in the airborne when that light went green and the first man in the line hurled himself out the door. Turning back sure as hell wasn't an option now, though, not when he was fourth in line and the second man was already gone. And, he mused as he moved to the door, he'd always been a stubborn bastard, anyway.

Lewis Nixon threw himself into chaos.




He hit the ground hard, harder than they had in any practice jumps. He nearly came down on top of a Kraut machine gun nest; didn't know how they didn't notice him but thought, a little hysterically as he untangled himself from his parachute and harness and bolted as fast and quiet as possible, they must have had their backs turned. Either that or he was going to have to start rethinking his ideas of the afterlife. Very quickly, as he ducked into the woods, crouched low with his rifle in hand, he realized that the battalion was in trouble.

"Flash!" hissed a hoarse voice from a clump of bushes, four figures rising out of the darkness, weapons unmistakably drawn and aimed at him.

"Jesus — Thunder, thunder!"

"Sarge? S'at you?" asked one of them, the two rifles lowering as they tramped out of the bushes.

"No, it's not Sarge, now who the hell — " They came closer, and Nixon realized abruptly that he didn't recognize a one of them. "Who the hell are you?"

"Littlefield and Fuller from Able," said the shortest of them.

"Bickerson, from Fox Company, sir."

"Wylie," said one of the two without a visible weapon, "from Charlie. Who are you, sir?"

"Lieutenant Nixon, 2d Battalion S-2." He peered at them. "You're with the 101st?"

All four dirty faces looked at him silently for a moment, then one said, "No, sir. The 82d."

That was the moment that Nix realized exactly how fucked up everything was.

The next realization came after he'd gathered them up and gotten them moving, toward the set of train tracks he'd seen while coming down. He glanced to his right, rifle held loosely in both hands and pointed at the ground. "Wylie, Bickerson, decided to go for a stroll in Normandy without your M-1?"

Bickerson shook his head. "No, sir. Those damn leg bags, the prop blast tore 'em off the second we got out of the plane."

"And your rifle was in yours." A sharp crack rang out and three of them immediately dropped onto one knee; Wylie's unsteady voice said, "Sorry. Stepped on a stick."

They rose again, and Bickerson glanced at Nixon. "Yes, sir."

"Fantastic," Nix muttered, and they forged ahead.

---

They gathered more and more wayward soldiers through the night and into the morning. "Did anyone land in the right goddamn drop zone?" he'd demanded of them, but they hadn't had an answer, either. Neither had the armored unit they'd met.

At least the boys in the tanks had been able to offer him a ride.

Nix gladly gave up his patchwork platoon to a louie from the 82d, said his goodbyes, and he hopped up onto a tank. All damn night and day spent getting through this country. He'd been here before, but so far, he damn well preferred the lights of gay Paris to mud-slopped, cow-filled Normandy.

Still, it looked like he was finally reaching some semblance of civilization here, as his behemoth of a mount creaked and rattled its way along. It also looked like the troops had already been seeing some action; the only color in the little town was the red staining the road and the lines of stretchers.

Nix abruptly recognized the stance of one lanky soldier amidst the sea of humanity, the little thatched roof houses, and something eased up just a notch in his chest. He started to grin.

Standing by the side of the tiny road, standing alongside the major and waiting for the small convoy to pass, Lieutenant Richard Winters looked up at the second tank — and a smile flashed bright in his dirty face.

Nix slapped the hatch hard, and the tank rumbled to a halt. "Going my way?" he called down over the sound of its engines, grinning easily now, like it was nothing and he always ran into Dick Winters in a shithole town in France after running around being shot at all night.

Dick surprised him; he grinned right back. "Sure," he said, and he tossed up his M-1. Nixon caught it and shifted it to his right hand, and he leaned down and offered Dick his left.

The other lieutenant clasped his hand, turned briefly to the officer he'd been speaking with and said something Nix couldn't hear, and then he looked up and Nix helped haul him up onto the tank. "Careful," Nixon drawled as the other man climbed up, fully aware of the irony, knowing Dick and knowing that he'd probably been throwing himself right into the thick of things all night and day. "Don't hurt yourself."

Dick sat down hard beside Nixon as the tank started up again, wrapping his left arm around the barrel of the tank's huge gun for support. He smiled broadly again (two in one day; it had to be a record) and reached over to clap Nixon on the shoulder. "Nice ride you got here, Nix."

Nix grinned, face bright under all that muck. "Straight from Utah Beach," he said loudly, over the noise as the tank motored on down the road. "We should put 'em to work before they're missed."

Dick smiled and wanted to know where he had been, and Nixon, as he began to explain, decided that maybe Normandy wasn't so bad after all.

[Last bit of dialogue from Band of Brothers.]